Mar 7, 2012

Mom’s Voice May Improve the Health of Premature Babies

When babies are born prematurely, they are thrust
into a hospital environment that while highly successful at saving their lives,
is not exactly the same as the mother's womb where ideal development
occurs. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) is equipped with highly
skilled care givers and incubators that regulate temperature and humidity, but
Amir Lahav, ScD, PhD, director of the Neonatal Research Lab at Brigham and
Women's Hospital (BWH) thought that something was missing - simulation of the
maternal sounds that a baby would hear in the womb. Now, new research conducted
by Lahav and colleagues links exposure to an audio recording of mom's heartbeat
and her voice to lower incidence of cardiorespiratory
events in preterm infants. This research is published online in The
Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine.

"Our findings show that there may be a window of
opportunity to improve the physiological health of these babies born
prematurely using non-pharmalogical treatments, such as auditory stimulation,"
said Lahav, principal investigator of the study.

Because they are underdeveloped, preterm infants
experience high rates of adverse lung and heart events, including apnea (pause
in breathing that lasts longer than 20 seconds ) and bradycardia (periods of
significantly slow heart rate). Researchers sought to determine whether an
auditory intervention could affect the rates of these unwarranted
cardiorespiratory events.

To conduct the study, Lahav enrolled fourteen
extremely premature infants (born between 26-32 weeks gestation) that were
admitted to the NICU at BWH. The infants were assigned to receive an
auditory intervention of maternal sound stimulation (MSS), four times per day
throughout their NICU hospitalization. Each infant received a
personalized MSS-a soundtrack that consisted of his/her own mother's voice and
heartbeat. The recording was played into the infant's incubator via a
specialized micro audio system developed in Lahav's lab.

Overall, researchers found that cardiorespiratory
events occurred at a much lower frequency when the infants were exposed to MSS
versus to routine hospital noise and sounds. This effect was statistically
significant in infants of 33 weeks gestation or older.

"Our findings are promising in showing that exposure
to MSS could help preterm infants in the short-term by reducing
cardiorespiratory events. The results also suggest that there is a period
of time when the infant's auditory development is most intact that this
intervention of MSS could be most impactful," Lahav said. "However, given our
small sample size of 14 infants, further research is needed to determine if
this intervention could have an impact on the care and health of preterm
infants."

This research was funded by support from Christopher
Joseph Concha Foundation, Hailey's Hope Foundation, Capita Foundation, Heather
on Earth Foundation, John Alden Trust, Learning Disabilities Foundation of
America, LifeSpan HealthCare and The Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation
and Phillips Healthcare.